Why Employees Still Want to Stay Home

The post-COVID return-to-office push began in 2021, following the availability of vaccines. Since then, employers have pushed employees back into the physical office space at least three times a week through back-to-work mandates and more punitive measures. This latter category has included tracking attendance and time management via dashboards and blocking remote workers from career progression and bonuses.

Despite all of this, the mandates aren’t working. While it’s tempting to blame issues like lack of motivation, a desire to stay home with the kids, and a preference to work in pajamas, a just-released survey by office data collection company Robin said that what’s keeping workers at home boils down to one thing: Productivity.

“We knew what external factors stopped people from coming into the office but were surprised by how much people were concerned about productivity loss once they got to the office,” Robin’s CEO Micah Remley told Connect CRE.

The Productivity Factor

Robin’s Return to Office Report 2024 offered the following numbers:

• Nearly 70% of those surveyed reported having a mandate in place

• 45% of employees under a back-to-office mandate were expected to be in that office four days a week

• 24% of those surveyed said they were in the office four to five times a week

• 73% of respondents said they were more connected with the company when in the office

The Robin survey explained that one challenge is the cost of getting to work. Many complained of long commute times, higher gas prices and expensive parking. Furthermore, employees said they feel more productive when working at home.

Conversely, this translated into the perception of lost time at the office due to “a lack of resources, poor office design or complicated processes,” the survey said. Specifically:

• 76% said they would be more productive at work with the right equipment set up at their desks

• 89% reported spending up to 20 minutes when they get to work looking for the right equipment

• 29% reported that they were more productive with their at-home work setup

Respondents cited noisy environments and lack of a focus space as reasons for preferring to work from home. However, this is coming at a time when office designs are more geared toward collaborative spaces.

In other words, productivity was the center of a lot of back-to-office reluctance. “Whether it be time lost to the commute or time lost in the office, participants regularly noted that these things took up time that would have otherwise been used for their work,” the survey said.

What to Do?

Remley said that companies need to spend more time “thinking bigger and considering how they can make the office a place people want to be.”

The survey explained that an important focus should be ensuring that office spaces are adequately resourced. And while it’s unnecessary to retire an open-space plan, “it may be more beneficial to consider how to create more heads-down focused areas for team members that don’t work as well in open floor plans,” the survey suggested.

“A lot of respondents are actually concerned about their individual productivity in the office,” Remley observed. “From not having the right desk setup to finding a free room for a call, leaders need to invest time and resources into creating office experiences that support productive workdays, not hinder them.”